I am very late on posting my Nephew’s B-day Cake (his birthday was in June) lol and will probably be late posting my Niece’s cake as well (her Bday is on October) due to Inktober 2017 & working/helping promote Night Of Fear Festival…Anyway!

Due to some time restraints and strange planning, I decided not to make his cake from scratch so I used boxed cake and icing – I know, I know don’t judge me! its great in a pinch! Because this was going to be a pickachu cake I choose a yellow, Lemon cake (which worked out perfect as it does not contain soy, flax or tree nuts great for those with allergies in the family), the box had enough batter for two 9″ round cakes.

The shape of Pikachu’s head is not a perfect circle with his slightly chubby cheeks and pointy ears, so I needed to cut both cakes to create the right shape of the face and ears. This resulted in quite a bit left over, so I decided to try my hand at making cake balls to later ice like poke balls. Basically you take your extra cake, chop it up into finer pieces then add a fair bit of icing, start mashing them together with your hands to bind the cake together, roll it into a ball and vuala – cake balls!

Now I did not have any small cake ball sticks, making these were not apart of my original plan, but I did have an abundant amount of popsicle sticks so I used those instead; though the cake ball sticks would of probably worked better, I added some icing to act as a “glue” to better secure the cake in place. Once “sticked” I placed the cake balls in the freezer to harden while icing/decorating the cake and prepping some melted chocolate to dip the cake balls in. If you decide to melt white chocolate, be sure to buy candy melts and not chocolate chips (the white ones do not work as well as the dark chocolate chips – not really what they are for either lol candy melts however work best). Not having a self warming bowl that melts chocolate and not wanting to use the microwave (did not want to keep having to remelt the chocolate) I created my own double broiler using a small sauce pan, colander & bowl. Just add some water to the pot (not too much, you do not want the water to touch the colander or bowl, let the steam do its magic) and place the colander into the pot with the bowl inside. Once this starts to heat up, add your chocolate melts and mix with a rubber spatula until they are evenly melted.

White Chocolate Chips – don’t work so great

Cany Melts

Candy Melts Works!

Once this was ready, I removed the cake balls from the freezer and began to dip them into the melted chocolate, sticking the sticks into cardboard (be sure to make pre cut slots, a styrofoam block would if been best) to allow them to dry. I later added red food colouring to the white chocolate (would recommend using red candy melts as the extra liquid from the food colouring slightly altered the chocolate’s consistency) and dipped the top half of the cooled white chocolate cake balls. Once cooled, I coloured some of the leftover yellow icing (used for the main cake) black, placed it into a sandwich bag as a make-shift piping bag and decorated the seam around the poke balls, finishing them off with a white chocolate chip button.

Once the poke balls were complete, I added my final touches to the cake with fondant. Starting from the lightest colour, working my way to the darker colours; colouring the white to red for the cheeks, then the leftover red to black for the tips of the ears, base of the eyes, nose and mouth. I like to use americolour food colouring for icing & fondant, find it has the best results.

Finally, using some water I “glued” the white eye details to the black fondant circles. If you have ever worked with fondant you know the key is to use confectioners sugar like flower to roll out, colour and shape the fondant to prevent sticking, making a light white dust appear on your fondant, but no need to worry as this can be removed with lightly brushing water over your fondant pieces to give them that nice, clean shine.

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